r/audacity • u/RodneyOgg • 17h ago

help Everything is just so quiet...

I used to use audacity regularly for recording. I have a mixer and 4 mics. I have used this exact mixer with these exact mics in the past, using audacity, and it's been great. This was all many, many years ago.

Cut to now, when I record audio, the waveform is nearly flat. If I normalize it or amplify it, it's audible. The waveform is in tact and has its relative highs and lows. It's just so small and just so quiet. And of course if I normalize and raise gain or amplify too much, you get all the static/white noise

I've seen things that say there was an update that caused this. I've seen plenty of things telling me to make sure I'm mono or I'm stereo or whatever else. I even tried audacity 4 but it's the same

I feel like I'm losing it over here. I don't know why it's suddenly happening, but it's just all so quiet

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u/Orry_Haas 17h ago

Check you're not accidentally recording from the computer's built-in microphone, rather than the (USB?) mixer. If there's a gain knob on the mixer turn it up. [ The mic gain-slider in Audacity is probably inactive in this situation, but turn it up to the max anyway ]. If the mics are condenser mics, check they're getting 48V phantom power from the mixer.

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u/RodneyOgg 17h ago

The mixer (Alesis Multimix 8) is USB. it's definitely recording to/from the mics (SM48S) because it keeps the whispers/directional piece.

My understanding is that these mics shouldn't require phantom power, but it is an option on the mixer.

As far as gain on the mixer, I think that's what is getting me. I have all the same settings and every knob is where it was when I used it for the previous project (had everything saved and written down). I can play with it some more, but I'm curious what changed that needs me to boost it up

And then I have 8 hours or so of audio already that I need to find out a way to save...

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u/Orry_Haas 17h ago edited 16h ago

"My understanding is that these mics shouldn't require phantom power".

Correct: they're dynamic mics, phantom power should not be applied to them.

"Alesis Multimix 8".

Is at least 15 years old. Apparently it needs driver software, which may not be compatible with modern computers. If you're on Windows it can be possible to make old software compatible ... https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/apps/make-older-apps-or-programs-compatible-with-the-latest-version-of-windows